Amazon's cloud computing will surpass its retailing business

Summary:Amazon on Monday announced persistent storage for its EC2 service and what's notable is how quickly the e-tailer is running ahead of the competition. In fact, Amazon's real business down the line will be its cloud services.

Amazon on Monday announced persistent storage for its EC2 service and what's notable is how quickly the e-tailer is running ahead of the competition. In fact, Amazon's real business down the line will be its cloud services. Amazon will be like a book store that sells cocaine out the back door. Books will be just a front to sell storage and cloud computing.

Everyone else--Google and Microsoft--are working on their cloud computing services, but they are really in the first revision of their respective offerings. Amazon is ahead and tweaking (Techmeme).

That's where the latest storage move is just the beginning. Amazon is offering 99.9 percent reliability and as it works toward its enterprise plans that could increase.

In its blog, Amazon says that it is going to be more transparent about its roadmap. What's notable to me is that Amazon even has a roadmap. It's quite possible that Amazon's real business becomes the cloud with e-tailing as a mere cover.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CN...
Full Bio